SEVEN weeks ago, when the Tribunal report on the airport firefighters dispute was published, this newspaper argued it would be difficult to undermine the arguments of such an eminent body.

As the States had commissioned the high-ranking report and paid #170,000 to get the best brains working on it, it was hard to see how States members unhappy with its contents would attack it.

Today, we see how: by deliberately and flagrantly misunderstanding it.

The report is praised by the Policy Council for being both clear and accurate.

Why then has its most fundamental conclusion been misread so fundamentally?

In bold, just so it would not be missed, the Tribunal wrote: ‘The system of government does not encourage either a corporate or collective responsibility. In our view there was a systemic failure to act in a corporate and strategic manner.’

One would think that pretty unequivocal.

Just in case, it goes on later to say that departments must stop operating in isolation and see the bigger picture.

There is no mention of these comments being limited to industrial relations. Yet that is how the council has chosen to interpret it.

It chooses instead to ‘assume’ that the Tribunal did not mean to look beyond the narrow parameters of pay deals.

Strangely, ministers do not seek to limit the Tribunal’s other recommendations in the same way. The commitment to openness and transparency is accepted as being across the board, not limited to pay deals. So, too, are the Tribunal’s thoughts on changes to the Emergency Powers Authority.

That the island’s senior political body should attempt to blunt the report’s sharpest criticism is not surprising.

But it is disappointing to see such chicanery cloaked in an insistence that the council welcomes an ‘agenda for change’ and a pretence that it is playing the honest broker by presenting the report without seeking to influence deputies.

If the States wishes to disagree with the Tribunal’s central recommendation so be it. Have the debate and then move on.

But to push it aside by deliberate misinterpretation smacks of cowardice.